Ahmed Yassin

Ahmed Yassin (1 January 1937-22 March 2004) was an imam from Palestine who was the founder of the Hamas terrorist group, seen by some as the army of Palestine. Under his direction, Hamas established hospitals, education systems, libraries, and other services, but claimed responsibility for many attacks against Israeli civilians in suicide attacks, bombings, rocket attacks, and shootings. A quadriplegic who was nearly blind, he was pushed around on a wheelchair. Yassin was killed in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli helicopter gunship's missiles.

Biography
Ahmed Yassin was born in 1937 in Al-Jura in Mandatory Palestine, United Kingdom. Yassin's family fled to the al-Shati camp in the Gaza Strip during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, and while he was 12 he was paralyzed under the waist and with all of his limbs while wrestling with a friend. Yassin was forced to be homeschooled due to deteriorating health, and spent much of his time reading. He was one of the best speakers in Palestine, and in 1987 he decided to fight for Palestinian independence. Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi founded Hamas, a paramilitary organization whose goal was to destroy Israel and establish an Islamic state in Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank.

Yassin was outspoken in his views against peace with Israel, and led the 1988 First Intifada against Israel in the first major trans-Palestine armed uprising against Israel. He is famous for saying that the fight against Israel would end with either "martyrdom or victory", an often-repeated Palestinian slogan. Yassin directly ordered the 2004 suicide bombing at the Erez Crossing, which killed 4 civilians. Israel decided to mark him for death, attempting to kill him for the second time since an F-16 attack on a building failed to kill him.

Death
An Israeli AH-64 Apache attack helicopter-gunship was dispatched to assassinate Yassin as he was wheeled out of his morning prayers in Gaza City in the Gaza Strip, the same mosque that he attended every day, only 330 feet from his home. F-16 fighter jets flew overhead to obscure the sound of the gunship, and the gunship fired Hellfire missiles at Yassin. Yassin, his two bodyguards, and 9 civilian bystanders. Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi succeeded him as the leader of Hamas.

Yassin's death was highly controversial. The United Nations, Arab League, African Union, China, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa condemned his extrajudicial assassination, while the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Romania refused to condemn the assassination, with the United States explicitly voicing their opposition to the UN's decision.